


Carpe Diem

by IncorrectEcho



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28371429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncorrectEcho/pseuds/IncorrectEcho
Summary: Seteth struggles with writer’s block, so Manuela suggests to move away from the classic fable.
Relationships: Manuela Casagranda/Seteth
Kudos: 10
Collections: Seteth Birthday Bash 2020





	Carpe Diem

“This better solve my writer’s block.” Seteth furiously scribbled random notes on the donkey ear of a forgotten novel. “So the chicken’s father didn’t support him…” he mused out loud, before crumpling up a different paper near him. “C’mon Seteth, don’t be ridiculous, that story has no purpose to exist.” Seteth groused and dug his head in his hands when Manuela entered his study.  
“How’s my worker bee doing? Better than his queen I hope.” Manuela involuntarily grasped her forehead in an attempt to squeeze the particularly incessant wrinkles away. Suppressing her ferocious headache was a neat side effect, which was ironically also the name of the drink she had one too many of last night.  
“What, is there something wrong with Flayn?” Seteth bared his teeth, before realizing the error of his response. “Sorry, force of habit, I’m sorry you’re feeling unwell.”

After finally leaving the official Church business in the hands of Mercedes, Seteth focussed on his passion. Inspired by his wife Manuela, who he married after years of will-they won’t-they chemistry, they decided to become a playwright-composer duo, ready to take the world by storm with adaptations of the various fables Seteth had written in his spare time as Church Secretary. Their first play was a huge success, and Fódlan awaited with great anticipation what the creators of the hit-musical Cats would bring to the stage next. 

“I can see you’re not yourself either, I’m guessing it has to do with the news of the M-word?” Manuela opened the palm of her hands to grab one of the papers lying on the floor, before remembering she wouldn’t know how to clean up a place.  
“Yes, I’ve heard of the Mockingbird Opera and its miraculous rise to stardom. As you can see, I’ve tried to respond with a grand idea of my own, but none of my fables are up to the task of being a box office hit like our first play was.”  
“What about the rat that learned to cook? That one definitely had potential. I even asked some of my students to write some tunes for it, in fact.” Manuela patted a creased paper on Seteth’s office, trying to let her eyes glide over part of his notes.  
“Highly unsanitary, my love.” Seteth interjected. “I cannot condone that behavior nor stimulate it. Fiction sets an example for society and rats and kitchens simply do not go together.”  
His face promptly hit the desk. “It’s me, isn’t it?” a muffled voice resonated from the wood. “I’m hopelessly out of touch with what the youth wants. Is theatre really storms and stress to them?”

Manuela sighed. “We’re well past the era of bread and games”  
“Yes, it seems so. Time’s flow has become a rapid current, and I’m afraid my fables are not the lifeboat that theatre demands it to be.” Seteth curtly replied, tone of voice implying that he had made up his mind about abandoning his project.  
Manuela clicked her tongue. “Nonsense” she said before she put her hands like a cup around her husband’s face.  
“You are timeless. Your keen sense of this world’s machinations and innate morality exceeds history. Reading your plays, they’re distilled divinity: Portraying a better and easier world and challenging the viewer to go out there and make that world of mice and men reality. You get to the heart of the matter swiftly and efficiently.” Manuela always had a sharp mind, and ever since her relationship with Seteth, she’s grown to trust herself to use it to great effect. “But the modern world can’t be waved goodbye with a bedtime story, Seteth. The world has grown up.”  
“Darling, thank you, but I am not up to the task.” Seteth curled his fingers around his glass. “It’s hard to write history when you’re still in it. A proper historian needs to see from a bird’s eye view. Has to have all perspectives.” he said.  
“But a proper playwright only needs to see one.” Manuela asserted. “And you need to trust that your eyes can see life as it plays out in front of you.” she said as she caressed the baggy eyes of her lover. Even if hidden under unflattering reading glasses, Seteth’s eyes reflected a sharpness that was rarely hidden under the weariness of immortality.  
“In a way, I even admire the Mockingbird.” Seteth sighed.  
“Who? Yuri?” Manuela looked surprised at the notion of Seteth reacting positively to a person with methods different to his, much less praise them.  
“Well, I don’t like, or even trust the man.” Seteth continued scribbling. “But as a writer, he has meticulous mastery of the society he describes. Von Hresvelg’s spirit echoes throughout the whole piece, yet not one mention of her name or allusion to her person.”  
Manuela nodded. “Dorothea and Yuri definitely felt the pulse of the world as-is. I’ve felt the presence of the emperor back in Enbarr too, but I always thought it was the war causing that nebulous fog. Yuri wasn’t afraid to get personal and point at Edelgard as the cloud casting a shadow over this continent still. And Dorothea played the lead part marvelously, no doubt inspired by the blossoming friendships between the Black Eagle class.”  
Seteth smiled, though this particular smile showed the more draconic parts of his teeth. He wasn’t sure whether it was because of the trust he put in his wife that he wasn’t afraid to show his past in even something as frivolous as a smile, or because the sharp sabers visible in the corner of his lips accurately reflected his own reaction to the name of the former Emperor. 

“I’ve never been good with names.” Seteth sat back in his chair and took his drink, to swivel it around in the glass. “History is driven by trespasses of laws, by adherence to virtues or confrontations with vices. Who these universal inevitabilities control or release is not relevant to me. Sothis’ light shines through any person and reveals the soul, and it is this soul and the balance of principles that it houses that decides their actions. It’s these axioms, these rational primitives of morality starting with life and death, that define us, their actions merely consequences that need to be brought back to their core.”  
“Right or wrong.” Manuela sucked her teeth.  
“Adherence or rejection.” Seteth took a sip. “To light, to virtue, to Sothis. Only with prayer can we look through the mist of our daily thoughts to see the ebb and flow of our inner battle. The rest is smoke and mirrors.”

“Smoke and mirrors are, incidentally, exactly what makes a good act. Adds some zazz.” Manuela said, climbing over the crumpled papers to sit on the desk, face to face to Seteth.  
“You bring down life to its core, but life isn’t two binaries reasoning. People are irrational at best, conflicting at worst. Light doesn’t battle darkness, light reflects on people to shine in darker places. People aren’t factors to cut away from an equation, they’re an essential part of it.” Manuela searched for the words that best fit the abstract metaphor her husband used. “People look at theatre for a reflection of their lives, daily struggles and all. That in itself is already a mirror. To see where their path in life leads to, you need to look into the possible paths, and in this world, paths aren’t decided by light and dark, but by people. Every friend, family member, words they live by, their experience, they are all ways to change a heart. Reducing all that is good to the same kind of light removes the color of their soul. You cannot remove what moves a person to see where they go.  
Add smoke and mirrors to all those colors, all those lights and you get more than an agent in a subconscious war. You get a person. And put those persons together and you get something infinitely more beautiful. You get love.”

Seteth groaned at a philosophical discussion lost once more to his wife. Ancient church doctrine was swiftly torn apart by the razor-sharp logic of Manuela Casagranda. It was now that a true smile broke through Seteth’s facial features and that was before Manuela stroked his cheek and went in for the killing blow.  
“What are you thinking of right now?” she asked. “I can see something is bothering you.”

“All my focus is on now is Flayn.” Seteth took a swig of the glass he had been staring had for a while, seeing the point Casagranda made. “I know it was for the best, to give her an education, and Fhirdiad is home to many sages that can best prepare her for her role as archbishop now that Byleth has stepped down.” Seteth’s lips stuck themselves to the glass to let the drink slither its way through his teeth. “But the knowledge of the big picture does not keep me from seeing the distance between us.”  
“It’s always the contradiction that gives a piece its beauty and, pro-tip, human life is full of it.” Manuela took a pen and tossed it at Seteth. “You may write that down.”  
Seteth chuckled. “I’m married to you Manuela, I know about contradiction.” Seteth put down his drink. “I just cannot write about it.”  
“You can’t write about me?” Manuela tilted her head in disappointment.  
“That’d be not subtle at all, wouldn’t it? You changed my life in every way imaginable, you’re hardly a silent force that can float through an act hidden in the shadows, you’re the blinding sun that makes me see the world. Reducing you to a single factor in an equation would be a disservice to your beauty.”  
“I’d say that’s a perspective worth showing.” Manuela sat down.  
“It’s a perspective worth living.” Seteth smiled tenderly. “And I’m the luckiest man in the world for the fact that it’s mine.” he said as he started writing his next masterpiece

Seteth and Manuela new piece ushered in an era of romanticism. While historians often attributed the new era of escapist and imaginative works to the marriage of the Mockingbird Opera’s Dorothea Arnault to Queen Petra MacNeary of Brigid and the coronation of Archbishop Flayn, experts agree that it was Seteth’s shift away from rationalism that laid the groundwork of this. Much like their marriage, Seteth and Manuela represented the perfect harmony of heart and mind.

**Author's Note:**

> you are not immune to sturm and drang. 
> 
> happy birthday seteth


End file.
